


Feed Me to the Lions

by verevolwes



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Beating, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Minor Character Death, Torture, Volgin wants to fuck Ocelot is anyone surprised?, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 05:35:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5816185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verevolwes/pseuds/verevolwes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ocelot felt his body drop, and he crumpled into a heap on the floor. He managed to keep himself upright, just barely. His head swam as the room came back to him, and he slowly regained feeling in his limbs, almost ruefully as they were crying out in agony. His head pounded and his muscles screamed when he tried to use them, but any minute spent now in the company of the Colonel felt like a minute borrowed off the end of his life."</p>
<p>I'm an author who knows what I like, and I like seeing my favorite characters get the shit beat out of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feed Me to the Lions

**Author's Note:**

> I'm what I would call a "very causal" Metal Gear fan. I haven't played any of the games myself, but I've watched Let's Plays of Snake Eater, Peace Walker, and Ground Zeroes. I wrote this with the Metal Gear Wiki open in one tab and Wikipedia open in the other, so if there are canon or historical errors, I'm sorry, but I really tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about.  
> I also haven't written a fic until 2013 so plz no bully.

Adamska joins GRU in September of 1962, and after that he is Ocelot and nothing else. It would be months before he’d eventually adopt the codename of ADAM as a cover for his spy work, but in the early weeks of the Russian Autumn he had no way of knowing this.

It did not take the young private very long, however, to realize that his affiliation with GRU would be short lived.

His first day as a private he was brimming with anxious energy which prickled under his skin; He had passed a PT test and entered the ranks at their lowest level and now it was time for the real work to begin. He and other recent recruits met various officers and went over policies and codes of conduct. Their visits would be punctuated with several small assignments to complete, mostly menial physical tasks thrown in to keep the bulk of them busy. Ocelot was eager to meet any and all challenges, though he got the impression that standing out, even in a good way, may not be in his best interest on the very first day.  There was a suffocating atmosphere in the base. It seemed at every available junction he and the other recruits were being tested, and pressure being applied. He was pretty sure at some point he heard one Staff sergeant tell an NCO that they were just waiting for one of them to fuck up.

In that manner most of the day passed by uneventfully. It wasn’t even until well after midday that Ocelot had any idea that something might be wrong.

It was only slightly past four o’clock when Ocelot and the others were walked by an NCO down a long hallway into a large assembly room. It was a gathering of probably 50 to 80 other GRU members with Colonel Volgin at the center of it, pacing through a clearing. He stood an intimidating 6 foot 7, and the sight of his scarred face made him even more menacing. The group was guided to the center, forming a line at attention in front of the Colonel. The atmosphere of the room was exceedingly tense, Ocelot noted, adding that it was also likely tense on purpose.

It became apparent that they had been gathered there for inspection. Wordlessly Volgin walked along the line, scrutinizing every soldier. For most he said nothing, for one private he commented that he was exceptionally tall, for another that he was laughably ugly. His words had their unprofessionalism, but his demeanor wasn’t one to be trifled with. When his eyes landed on Ocelot the young soldier struggled not squirm under his gaze.

“Ocelot, yes?” He asked flatly. Having never been formally introduced before, Ocelot’s mind ran wild with why Volgin would know him by name already.

“Yes sir.” He answered, proud of the control he was exercising in his voice. He’d never felt comfortable around authority figures. There was such intimidation there, which he struggled to reconcile with his need for approval. If he let his weakness show, he’d never gain the Colonel’s respect.

“You’re just a kid.” Volgin dismissed, his eyes trailing up and down the young soldier. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen, Colonel.”

Volgin smiled, though his cold eyes remained dead. He reached out a gloved hand to pat the younger man’s cheek. “Cute,” He smirked. It’s patronizing, and slightly demeaning, but Ocelot knows better than to move out of his reach. Even years before joining GRU, rumors of Volgin’s harshness had reached the young Russian, and even civilians knew not to cross him.

There are two other recruits in line after Ocelot, neither of which receive any comments from the Colonel. Volgin takes a few paces back so he can look at them all collectively, for a moment the room is very quiet, none of the officers giving any indication as to what’s happening next. Ocelot feels one of his fellow recruits shift uncomfortably beside him, which appeared to be the catalyst Volgin was waiting for.

“Private!” He shouts suddenly, making the entire room snap to attention. “Yes you,” he continued making eye contact with the shifting soldier, “what do you go by?”

If shaking during formation was the boy’s first mistake, pausing too long before answering was his second. “K-Karev …” he replied almost weakly. Third strike.

“Come forward soldier,” Volgin ordered, his tone plain and unreadable. Karev took three paces towards the Colonel, but kept an almost reverent distance. The Colen began to pace a circle around Karev, removing the red gloves which covered his large hands. From a distance Ocelot could tell that they matched the Colonel’s scarred face in their marred-ness. “Were you not instructed to stand at attention while in the presence of superior officers, Private Karev?” Volgin asked, rhetorically, “Did you think I’d go easy on you because it’s your first day? Hold these,” Volgin instructed Karev, handing over the gloves.

Before Ocelot’s mind could supply an explanation for exchange, Volgin quickly offered one himself.

The Colonel’s fist moved too fast for him to see. Just a shock of electric blue connecting with Karev’s face and the soldier was on the ground. Volgin didn’t stop. He threw punch after punch, each delivered with such speed and ruthlessness Ocelot’s mouth dropped open. Karev was screaming, his body convulsing with each hit. Ocelot realized at once that he was not imagining things, the Colonel really _did_ generate an almost lethal amount of electricity with each hit, and most terrifying of all he did not seem to be letting up at all.

Volgin held the private up by the lapels of his uniform, his opposite fist connecting again and again with the soldiers face. Blood blossomed wherever his hits made contact, and Karev’s screams grew more desperate. At the sight of so much red Ocelot struggled not to retch. It was truly both horrifying to witness and disturbing on the most basic level. Pure, unprompted savagery. The Colonel was relentless, brutalizing the recruit until quite suddenly his screams tapered off with a choking noise. Volgin released the front of his uniform, dropping the motionless soldier to the ground. It was unrecognizable as Karev.

The Colonel straightened up, breathing deeply as an officer from the side of the room came over with a sheet in hand. He took Karev’s pulse as Volgin began to speak.

“That’s just to remind you all,” he paused. The officer behind him covered Karev’s entire body in the sheet, once it had settled Ocelot could tell the Private had stopped breathing. “Of the standard to which all GRU operatives will be held.”

He made deliberate eye contact with Ocelot who felt the bottom drop out of his stomach at the piercing glare. “If you fuck up under my command,” Volgin continued, “You will not live to fuck up again.”

The room was still, and deafeningly quiet. No one else’s face wore similarly shocked expression, they’d probably witnessed worse. Ocelot could hear his blood pumping in his ears. He felt lightheaded. That could have been any of them. It could have been him.

“Dismissed!” Volgin’s voice cut through the silence like the crack of a whip, and the room was steadily emptied of soldiers. Volgin disappeared into the crowd, exiting through one of the side doors. The point he had come to make had been communicated flawlessly, intimidation, devotion, perfection. Ocelot and the remaining recruits were filed out next to last, none of them said a word, nor looked each other in the eye. Had Ocelot chanced to glance back before they had exited the room he would have seen only the medical officer left behind, knelt over Karev’s corpse, a hand extended to touch a wet, red stain growing steadily on the sheet.

\--

It was over six months later, in mid-March, before Ocelot himself would come to test the precedent set by Volgin that day at the assembly.

His hands shook uncontrollably and his breathing was rapid and short. In most situations he had taken to twirling his revolvers to calm his nerves, and even at times when it didn’t work it at least granted him the impressive air of being in control.

That’s what he told himself, anyway.

But as he paced outside of Volgin’s office, feet unsteady and head swimming, he could hardly card a hand through his short hair, forget gripping a gun.

_Sergeant_ Ocelot, as he was known now, had been put in charge of a standard retrieval mission. His target: Diana Yezhov, a journalist based out of Saint Petersburg. She’d recently left her station at Pravda, a famous Russian newspaper, and disappeared off the map. She had been the papers senior correspondent to China, well known for several incendiary pieces she’d published regarding the communist situation under Mao Zedong, which was often overly critical taken the Pravda’s usual disposition. The red-flags were raised when GRU caught reports that her children had been spotted disembarking a plane at JFK, being hurriedly greeted by relatives then ushered into a cab. The word was Yezhov had information she knew she wasn’t supposed to have, and was fleeing the country as a result. She had sent her family first, as a precaution, but GRU would have to move quickly if they wanted to catch the woman herself.

Ocelot’s mission was to nab her before she had a chance to defect. A mission which he had failed to complete.

That night, or morning rather, the young sergeant and his men had taken every precaution to approach the cabin undetected. Yezhov had been spotted in a cow-town only about five kiks from the Russian boarder, and it only took minimal bribing to find a farmer who’d had contact with her, and minimal torture to get him to talk. As the clock crested two in the morning, Ocelot led a small team of about ten to the cabin in the woods. All lights were out, Yezhov would be sleeping. It would take two seconds to slip inside and pull a bag over her head, when she woke up she’d be back at GRU headquarters. Then she would be Volgin’s to deal with.

Except Ocelot had greatly underestimated the ability of a journalist to gather information, and somehow Yezhov had been warned of their arrival. It took all of two seconds upon busting through the front door for the sergeant to asses that Yezhov was nowhere to be found in the one-room cabin. He heard one of his men call to him from around back. There were footprints in the snow, headed East.

Ocelot and his men tracked the journalist through the woods. It wasn’t hard, after all she was only a civilian, but it wasn’t very long before they came to a riverbank, it’s freezing water no longer solid after the repeated heating and cooling they’d been experiencing this March. The river was certainly too wide to cross, especially in the winter chill, but all traces of Yezhov seemed to stop there. He sent men down the bank in both directions, looking for signs of the woman, but in half an hour all had returned with nothing. No tracks, no leads, no Yezhov.

He had managed to buy time on his return to base, and then there was time spent filing the actual report (which he also drew out to its full potential), so it was already the evening before he could delay it no longer; he had to meet with Volgin. He never forgot about his first day on base, about Karev. Volgin had brutalized others since then, he liked to make an example out of his soldiers, like they were his personal playthings. Ocelot had seen him turn on a dime, and do truly terrifying things to others, even those who Volgin appeared to like. No one was safe.

In the months since he had started, Ocelot, on the other hand had done surprisingly well. He was still so young, and so eager to prove himself that he often came off as desperate, which earned him the respect of some and the mockery of others. He was anxious to advance, to become someone important, he wanted to be revered in the way Volgin and other legendary militants were revered, only … without so much of the scare-tactics he’d hoped. Volgin in particular had taken a liking to him, giving him constant tasks on which to perform well and opportunities to prove his worth, but there was always a sinister air in everything he did. Ocelot was not so naïve as to not realize what the darkness was in Volgin’s eyes. It was predatory, it was sadistic, it had singled him out, but up until now it had been … patient.

Up until now.

Pulling himself out of reflection, Ocelot finally raised his hand (clad now in its own red glove) to knock sharply on the door. A muffled voice from the other side beckoned him in, whether it belonged to Volgin or not couldn’t be determined.

Ocelot shuffled into the office, which was occupied by several higher-ranking majors as well as the Colonel himself. They all turned their attention to the young sergeant, and Ocelot wished nervously, to adjust his hat, his scarf, his anything, under their scrutiny, but knew better than to let them see his shaking hands. No one spoke.

Until Ocelot did, “Colonel Volgin, I have a report for you on the Yezhov recovery mission,” He prefaced, hoping that the gravity contained in his voice might convince some of the other officers to leave before he had to admit he’d fucked up. If he was going to die, he’d hoped he might have been allowed to die with some of his pride intact. No one made a move.

“And? Sergeant?” Volgin prompted him, though his expression read that he already knew exactly what the young blonde was about to say.

“It would appear that though my men and I arrived at Diana Yezhov’s cabin upon the early hours of this morning, she had fled into the woods some time before that, covering her tracks when she came to a nearby river.” A beat, “We lost her, Colonel.”

In the stillness which followed Ocelot noted that the shaking he’d been unable to control all afternoon had left him, replaced with an icy numbness, like after your arms fallen asleep for too long. His eyes focused and unfocused. He felt incredibly out of place; a dead man among the living.

“Gentlemen,” Volgin finally addressed his officers, “Let’s reconvene on this after dinner, I’d like a word with the sergeant alone.” One of the men picked up a file folder from Volgin’s desk and tucked it under his arm, but the rest of the officers left without comment. Ocelot briefly met one of their gazes, that of his own commanding officer, who made a tight face before looking away.

_Look upon me and despair_ , Ocelot thought briefly before stopping himself, he didn’t want that to be his final musing.

The final major shut the door with a click oddly reminiscent of a cell door locking, and the sergeant let out an unsteady breath. Ocelot stood, unmoving, in the center of the room. He tried not to think about all the things he’d miss out on, dying a virgin because he’d always been too busy to explore the Russian night life, never getting to retire at 60 because he was going to die right here right now at 18 and a half. He didn’t want to feel sorry for himself, but as Volgin stalked towards him, removing his gloves almost teasingly slow, it was hard for him to feel anything else.

After all, he was just a kid.

“Ocelot,” Volgin started, standing too close, towering a whole seven inches taller than the boy, “You’re shaking.”

_Again?_ He thought, he hadn’t noticed. “Sorry sir.” He replied, his voice almost failing him. It was stupid of him to say, it wasn’t going to make the situation any better.

It made Volgin smile at least.

He felt Volgin’s fist connect with his gut, but he did not feel his knees or his hands hit the ground, though they did, in that order. The muscles in his body tensed, near to the point of tearing, and he heard himself scream before he felt it leave his throat. Pain bloomed in his every nerve ending and his head reeled from attempting to process it all. Every hit Volgin landed caused an odd sort of disassociation within him, his mind blanking and his eyes seeing white. What he felt and experienced seemed to lag several moments behind his actual perception of events. A punch landed in one moment wouldn’t resonate until several seconds later. He could see himself being hit before he could feel it, and when he tried to react it was futile. Ocelot mused that he would’ve rather just been beat to death, since the added electricity made it almost impossible to orientate himself or have any idea what was going on. Ocelot felt his shoulders jerk suddenly and the back of his head smack against the floor before he could piece together that he had at some point landed on his back. There was something warm and wet on his face, and when he stuck his tongue out he could taste it was blood. _When was I hit in the face?_

“P-please,” he heard himself beg, spitting blood as he spoke.

That earned him a hard kick to the side, his battered body in too much pain to even appreciate that at least Volgin’s kicks weren’t also electrified. He had half gotten his bearings and mostly rolled onto his stomach before he was stopped. Volgin’s foot dug into his shoulder, pressing him into the ground at an odd angle. He let out another mangled cry, which earned him a chuckle from above. Then the pressure was removed, and without thinking Ocelot chanced a glance at the Colonel, part of him praying that against odds, Volgin might be feeling benevolent tonight and spare him.

Two hands found his throat, gripping tight around both sides. Ocelot’s eyes widened as he was hoisted into the air until his feet no longer touched the ground. He tried to hold himself up against his attacker, pulling at the hands, leveraging himself. He managed to alleviate some pressure on his windpipe, though not enough to take a full breath. His gasps for air seemed to be exactly what Volgin was looking for, and in the overhead light of the office Ocelot could tell the Colonels pupils were dilated almost to capacity.

“I want you leaving here, Sergeant, with the knowledge that the only thing stopping me from killing you tonight,” Volgin threatened him, his grip tightening, “… is that I’d rather fuck you first.”

Ocelot felt his body drop, and he crumpled into a heap on the floor. He managed to keep himself upright, just barely. His head swam as the room came back to him, and he slowly regained feeling in his limbs, almost ruefully as they were crying out in agony. His head pounded and his muscles screamed when he tried to use them, but any minute spent now in the company of the Colonel felt like a minute borrowed off the end of his life. Volgin largely ignored the soldier as he got shakily to his feet, choosing instead to reaccessorize his gloves and sit behind his desk. Ocelot didn’t have to be told twice to fuck off, so in spite of how weak his body felt he staggered to the door. He was honestly impressed that he could walk at all, however poorly. On the other side of the door he was met by two NCOs who attempted to help him to stand. As the door shut behind him, Ocelot, confident that he was safely out of Volgin’s sights began to heave before vomiting. _That would be the electricity for you_ , he thought to himself. With the help of the non-commissioned officers,  Ocelot made it back to his quarters, concentrating the whole time on not retching again.

The sergeant was out of his uniform and lying in bed before he could process how he’d come to accomplish all that, but his achievement was lost in the overall failure of the day. He slept, rather, he was unconscious in his bunk for the rest of the night, exhausted from the encounter. It would be days before he could move normally, weeks before the bruises would fade, and much much longer before he could let someone reach for him without flinching.

It would only be another month, however, before he would take up the moniker of ADAM, and begin spying on Volgin and GRU from within.

But that’s a story on its own.

**Author's Note:**

> There might be a second part to all this, as I certainly have a developing story in my head, but for now let's just consider this a one-off because I'm a college student with less and less free time every day.


End file.
